FREMONT — As Cecelia Shih walked out of a Fremont tennis club Monday morning, the club’s current and prospective owners struck up a conversation with her that quickly morphed into a sales pitch.

They want city permission to build homes on at least half of the nearly 13-acre private club in the center of Fremont’s Kimber Park neighborhood. In addition, they need allies because the city’s planning department says the parcel was designated as open space. Meanwhile, nearby residents are showing up en masse to city meetings, threatening lawsuits to fight any development proposal.

Shih, a club member and Kimber Park resident, nodded when the owners reminded her that the land is private and told her that any development would improve hiking trails and preserve all 612 heritage trees, including many redwoods and oaks.

But she was no convert.

“We should keep it the way it is,” Shih said. “I love the fresh air. Nowhere in Fremont do you get fresh air like this.”

The battle appears to be just getting under way over The Club at Mission Hills, a tennis and fitness center that doubles as a wooded oasis for turkey, deer and Kimber Park’s 339 homeowners.

Residents of the upscale neighborhood where culs-de-sac are the norm say that any housing construction would violate the original development covenant that set aside the land as private open space.

The current owner, Sheena Chang, counters that the club, which neighborhood residents can join at discounted rates, is outdated and unprofitable, and that a well-designed housing development could help pay for upgrades without destroying the natural setting. Moreover, she said that it is unfair for residents to expect a private owner to provide public amenities such as the hiking trails without a greater opportunity to generate income from the land.

“They have to understand that it’s private property,” she said.

After failing to win city support for two plans to refurbish the club and build homes on much of the remaining land, Chang has agreed to sell it to developer Ed Daou. The purchase agreement, which Daou said is not contingent on his getting city approval for a housing development, is now in escrow, they said.

Daou said he will present a new development plan within the next three months that would put single-family homes on at least half of the nearly 13 acres, along with a bigger, more modern fitness club and an expanded nature trail open to the public. “I think we will be able to come up with a plan that makes everyone happy,” he said. “It can be a win-win for everybody.”

Residents, who first learned in March of a plan that Chang presented to the city for 28 homes on about two-thirds of the tennis club property, already have formed a “Save Kimber Park” website and collected more than 1,100 signatures from residents opposing any development. More than 50 of them showed up to last week’s City Council and Planning Commission meetings as pre-emptive strikes against any development plan.

Several previous club owners also have failed to win city or neighborhood support for building houses on the site. Christina Broadwin, a Save Kimber Park leader, said residents mobilized quickly and fiercely against the current effort because the parties involved have connections with City Hall.

Chang, who purchased the property in 2004 for slightly more than $6.1 million, is a prominent Fremont landowner and chairwoman of the city’s Economic Advisory Commission. Her consultant, Roger Shanks, worked in the city’s planning department for three decades.

Kimber Park was developed in 1973 on land between Mission Boulevard and the hills, just south of Stevenson Boulevard. At the time, the City Council declined to accept the 12.8-acre club site as a city park, but it did approve it as “as a private ownership park with limited public access,” city records show.

The fitness club was later approved with the option to add a restaurant.

Chang and Shanks have argued that city planning rules actually allow for as many as 50 homes to be built in Kimber Park — an argument that city planners reject.

Planning department officials have written multiple times that the parcel was designated for open space and that Chang would need City Council approval to put houses on it.

“The owners have always been asking city staff for advice if it will fly,” Fremont Planning Director Jeff Schwob said. “We don’t think it has legs.”

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